Dear Amelia,
Here in Western Australia it’s the season for blue swimmer crabs, which are called blue swimmer crabs because they’re blue and they swim.
When I was a kid these crabs were called blue mannas and I used to go with my Dad (your Great Granddad Keith) down to the estuary in Bunbury to catch them with wire scoop nets attached to long wooden poles.
The best time to catch them was at sunset because that’s when they were scuttling around on the floor of the estuary looking for things to eat.
You’d wade through the shallow water in a pair of old sandshoes, getting eaten alive by mosquitos and hoping the crabs wouldn’t mistake your ankles for whatever it was they liked for dinner.
They’re vicious little buggers and I still have a scar on my ankle to prove it.
I needed five stitches – I suspect you could hear my screams in the Middle East.
Not that it put me off.
I’m certainly no hero but I was always willing to risk limb, if not life, in order to get a feed of crabs.
I absolutely love them.
Later on, when I married your Grandpa, I used to go out crabbing on the ocean with my father-in-law, your Great Grandpa Roy, and his mates.
We’d stop the boat and throw drop nets over the side – far more civilised.
Later still, my Mum and Dad bought a caravan and a tinny and kept them at a caravan park at Yunderup, so crab-wise I was (for want of a better expression) like a pig in shit.

This is a tinny that looks nothing like the one your Great Grandad had. His was much more beaten up.

You’d get back to the caravan park with your catch and almost every van would have a campfire blazing out the front with a drum full of boiling seawater on top to cook the crabs in.
All the blokes would be standing around the fires having a yack and sipping Swan Lager from a can, even though it was 10 o’clock in the morning.
They were all called Vern or Len or Ted and they smoked Turf and Craven A and had bow legs.
Their wives had exotic names like Valmae and Merle and smoked Alpine while they sat around reading the Women’s Weekly and James A. Michener novels.
Speaking of crabs, when your Grandpa and I were at uni we knew a bloke who caught the sort you don’t find in an estuary.
This bloke got rid of them by sitting in an empty bath and spraying his private parts with Pea-Beu.
I’ve often wondered if he used the Pine Fresh or the Surface Spray.
I now buy my blue swimmer crabs from the Boatshed Markets down on the Albany foreshore.
Here are two I bought last weekend.
They go red when you cook them, as I expect I would too if I was dropped into boiling water.

These crabs were really big ones, so I cooked them for five minutes after the water had come back to the boil and then left them to cool in a colander.
They were perfect and, as always, well worth the effort of cleaning and peeling them.
Our favourite way of eating them is as crab cocktails (like prawn cocktails but without the prawns) and crab fettuccine, so I’ll give you the recipes for both.

Put the shredded lettuce in the bottom of individual serving bowls or glasses.
Pile the fresh crab meat on top.
Mix all the sauce ingredients together and stir well.
Drizzle the sauce over the crab meat.
This cocktail sauce will keep for up to a month in the fridge – just cover it with plastic wrap.
The recipe is easily halved, third-ed (sorry) or quartered, depending on how many crab cocktails you’re making.
The sauce is also delicious in a fish-cake burger – even better if you stir in a finely chopped spring onion before you dollop it on the bun.

I didn’t take a picture of the crab cocktails because we were starving. Here’s a home-made prawn cocktail instead.

The next recipe is a classic, taught to me back in the day by my friend and former colleague, cookery writer Margaret Johnson. I’ve been cooking this for years and, as you do, have changed it around a bit. I would still crawl over hot coals to eat it.

Cook the fettuccine in lots of boiling salted water until al dente.
Just before it’s ready, heat the olive oil in a big frying pan over a low-ish flame and cook the garlic and chilli for about 30 seconds (just until the smell of the cooking garlic hits your nostrils – no longer).
Tip the drained fettuccine into the frying pan, add the crab meat, chopped parsley and salt and pepper to taste and toss everything together with a pair of tongs.
Tip into a serving bowl and serve immediately.
Marg doesn’t bother cooking anything but the fettuccine.
She then tips it into a bowl and mixes all the other ingredients through.

Girl with a Bread Roll and Coloured Band-Aids: 2013 version of Girl with a Pearl Earring

Dear Amelia,
Earlier this week I came across a hardback book among the many thousands that cram the shelves at Albany Drive-In Mart out on Albany Highway.
It was by someone called R. Moore and was titled Three Thousand Things Worth Knowing (Comprising valuable information, recipes and tables, for the mechanic, merchant, lawyer, doctor, farmer, and all classes of workers in every department of human effort).
It was a very interesting book, published by the Grand Union Tea Company in 1884.

I would’ve bought Three Thousand Things Worth Knowing if it hadn’t cost $25.
Not that I’m tight-fisted or anything, but because I knew it had probably been part of a deceased estate and would have been bought by the shop owner for about 25 cents (I have my limits when it comes to mark-ups – 10,000 per cent usually does it for me).
Anyway, the previous owner of the book had written something quite amazing inside the front cover, in pencil, in that formal, old-fashioned handwriting that always makes me think of your Great Great Nanna Ethel.
This is what he’d written:Refer page 59. How to cure Lockjaw.Use turpentine.
It got me wondering how many people had to die an agonising death from what is now called tetanus before the publishing bloke at the Grand Union Tea Company said to the author, “Excuse me R. Moore, re page 59: I think you might need to re-work it a bit.”

Bring out the turps: a person suffering from lockjaw (aka tetanus), painted by Sir Charles Bell. Pic courtesy of Wikipedia, which is why it’s minuscule.

This book also got me wondering why I don’t frequent Albany’s op shops and second-hand stores on a more regular basis, seeing as how you’re always guaranteed to find an absolute treasure.
Luckily, I was dragged around them all last week by your Uncle Paul, op-shop book browser extraordinaire, who is staying with us at the moment, having made the trip down after my 60th-birthday weekend.
It was fabulous, my 60th-birthday weekend – one of the best birthdays ever.
Three nights at the Hilton, and a wonderful birthday surprise organised by your Mum that involved being picked up in a stretch limo and taken to the beautiful Matilda Bay Restaurant on the river at Crawley.
The six of us (me, you, your Grandpa, your Mum and Dad and Uncle Paul) sipped champagne while the limo driver took us on an hour-long riverside tour before taking us to the restaurant.
Then we hoed into it again on the way back to the hotel, which was via Kings Park so we could enjoy the city lights.
Here are some (regrettably crappy) pictures I took with my mobile phone.

Girl with Bread Roll on Head. This was taken at Matilda Bay – see all the rich people’s boats in the background.

Your Mum

Your Dad

Your Uncle Paul

Your Grandpa

In the limo on the way home – you loved those disco lights. Note the feral eyes.

Your Grandpa gave me a lovely topaz ring and necklace for my birthday, topaz being the stone of true love, which not surprisingly made me cry like a baby (if you’re a good girl and stop climbing out of your new bed six times a night I’ll leave them to you in my will).
I even got a present from the Hilton.

Then, of course, it was back to reality and a deflated bank balance, which is why this week’s recipe is for Pasta Bake.

This is pretty basic but delicious – plus, it’s not sloppy (which I hate).
Fill a big pasta pot with water, throw in some salt and put it on the stove to boil.
Add the penne to the boiling water and cook for a minute or so less than it says on the packet (about 13 minutes).
While that’s happening, heat the oil in a big frying that has a lid.
Tip in the onion, bacon and mushrooms and fry for about 5 mins over medium-high heat, stirring, until they’re soft.
Add the garlic and crushed chilli and fry, stirring, for another minute.
Stir in the tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes, pressing them down with the back of a wooden spoon so they split (a potato masher is also very effective).
Stir in the wine, lower the heat, cover and simmer gently until the penne is ready.
Preheat the oven to 190C.
Drain the penne and tip it into a big, shallow oven-proof dish.
Stir in the tomato sauce and as much grated cheese as you like.
Sprinkle more grated cheese on top and bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until golden.
Eat with a green salad.

This has got nothing to do with anything. I just like putting daisies in a golden syrup tin.

Dear Amelia,
Sometimes real life – as in, work – gets in the way of blogging, which is a bugger because I’d be quite happy to sit here all day, every day, writing nonsense and posting recipes.
Work has gone ballistic in the last couple of weeks, which is why I haven’t had the time to sit here and write things like, “I was stunned by the woody freshness of the avocado” or, “This method of cooking steak was taught to me by my French friend Nathalie” or, “With a little care, a simple snack can make a delectable mini-feast”.
Luckily for me, all this stuff has already been written by Carina Cooper, who is the author of the Notting Hill Cookbook.

Since buying this cookbook I’ve been asking myself do I dislike Carina because she’s a wanker?
Or do I like dislike her because she’s thin, blonde, good-looking, lives in one of the most desirable suburbs on Earth, has directed documentaries for the BBC and appears to be filthy rich?
The answer is yes to all of the above.
To add insult to injury, Carina has an “inspiring husband” called Franc and four daughters called Ithaka, Flynn, Sidonie and Zazou.
Here is more of what Carina has written in her Notting Hill Cookbook.
“From the age of about four my children cooked their own supper on a Sunday evening. Oeuf en cocotte was Flynn’s favourite.”
And, in the introduction to a recipe for Prawns Margarita: “We were sitting on a beach in Mexico with our friends Goffredo and Alix.”
As someone who would only be able to write, “From the age of 10, my children were able to microwave their own baked beans,” and “We were sitting on a beach in Safety Bay with Ron and Maureen,” I’ll make no bones about the fact that I dislike Carina with every fibre of my being.
So the question is, why did I buy her cookbook?
Well, because it was $2, hardback, hardly a mark on it, at the Salvos Community Store in Chester Pass Rd.
Your Uncle Paul is on leave at the moment and came down for a visit, and because we’re both book fiends we did the usual trawling of the op shops.
Here’s the big tip: Notting Hill may have fabulous bars, flower shops, cafes, restaurants, delis, bakeries, fishmongers, butchers and markets, but Albany has the best-value second-hand shops in the Universe.
The Salvos! My God, you haven’t lived until you’ve trawled through their bookshelves.
And unlike the Red Cross shop, which has gone all upmarket retro and is selling books for upwards of $4 (the cheek!), the Salvos are sticking to two bucks a pop, no matter what the original price.
Here’s what I bought for $8 on Friday.

I bought this one for your Grandpa.

You’ll see that the book by Masterchef Australia judges Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris was originally $49.95.
And it was one of two that was on the shelf (the other one is probably still there, so if you live in Albany you should stop reading this right now and get on your bike).
I was going to give you a Carina Cooper recipe because, despite the pretensions and gag factor of the book, some of the recipes don’t look half bad.
But I haven’t cooked anything from the book yet so I’m going instead with something from The Best, the TV series that was on Foxtel ages ago.

There are some great recipes in the book that accompanied the series, so grab it if you see it in an op shop near you. It’ll be the best $2 you’ve ever spent.
I made this Oriental Noodle Salad because I’d bought some sesame seeds for a prawn recipe that failed miserably and needed to use them up.
It’s very different, light and healthy and good to eat on a hot day.

Soak the noodles for about five minutes in boiling water to cover.
While they’re soaking, grab a big bowl and mix together the vinegar, salt and sugar.
Add the sliced red onion and mix to combine.
Peel the cucumber, halve it lengthways, scoop out the seeds with a spoon and chuck them out.
Slice the cumber thinly and put it in the bowl with the chopped chilli, smoked salmon and coriander, stirring to combine.
Drain the noodles in a colander and run them under cold water until cool.
Put them in the bowl and toss everything together.
Toast the sesame seeds in a small non-stick frying pan and sprinkle them over the top of the salad before serving.

Dear Amelia,
I’ve been really busy with work lately, so it was lovely to see you last week and take some time out, even if my visit was only a fleeting one.
It never ceases to amaze me how many cuddles you can fit into 12 hours if you really put your mind to it.
Also, have you noticed this yin and yang thing we’ve got going?
Eg: I love drawing on your blackboard and you love rubbing it out. It’s a perfect balance.
The bit you actually like best is cleaning the blackboard duster by bashing it against the palm of your hand.
The dusting gene skipped a generation on my side of the family so it’s good to see it’s re-established itself in you – you’ll be able to save Nanna from suffocating under a pile of her own filth.
Here are a couple of other dusting options we could investigate further down the track if you’re interested.
I found them on this website when your Grandpa was watching Band of Brothers for the 400th time and I was forced to either kill myself or surf the Internet aimlessly.
The first option depends on your Mum and Dad providing you with a little brother or sister but in the meantime we can always borrow your cousin Ava.

I made some prawn pasta for dinner last night, which your Grandpa loved but I thought needed a bit more oomph.
It came about because I had some nice fat prawns in the freezer and then when I went down to Reeves to get some veggies they had really nice-looking baby spinach and punnets of cherry tomatoes on special for $1.99.
They also had this Australian-made pasta.
If you read the guff on the packet you’ll see that Australia is one of the few countries in the world – possibly the only one – that can grow ready-packaged fettuccine in its fields.
Who would’ve thought?

I must say it was very relaxing and celebrity-cheffy wandering around Reeves, squeezing produce and putting fresh, seasonal vegetables into my basket.
If I was a bloke and wasn’t as old as Methuselah, I think I could easily have been mistaken for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Put a big pan of water on the stove to boil and cook the fettuccine according to packet directions.
All up this should take 15-20 minutes.
While that’s happening, heat the oil in a big non-stick frying pan over medium heat and cook the garlic and chilli for 30 seconds.
Tip in the tomatoes, white wine and dried basil and stir until simmering, squashing the tomatoes down with the back of a wooden spoon.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and let it simmer gently for 5 minutes or so.
Add the prawns and when they start to turn pink, chuck in the spinach.
Cook, stirring, for a few more minutes until the spinach wilts and the prawns are cooked.
Drain the cooked fettuccine and tip it into the frying pan, tossing it around to coat with the sauce.
Serve with a bowl of Parmesan cheese to sprinkle over the top (OK, here’s a confession that should send me straight to culinary Hell – I actually prefer the taste of Grana Padano and that’s what I always use).
Next time I make this I think I’ll wilt the spinach in a separate pan and drain off any liquid before adding it to the sauce.
Or maybe I’ll forget about the spinach and use some fresh basil instead.

Edit: I made this again and added two finely chopped anchovies with the tomatoes. I also left out the spinach and when the prawns were cooked (but before I added the cooked fettuccine), I stirred in half a bunch of chopped fresh basil. It was really delicious – much better than the spinach version.

Dear Amelia,
When your Grandpa and I were first married back in the deep, dark 70s, we were deeply darkly broke. As a result we were very much into what is now called “vintage” but back then was called “second hand” and “cheap” and, more often than not, “crap ”.
This is why we ended up with a hand-painted yellow fridge with a freezer the size of a shoebox and a pull-down chrome handle that nearly took your arm off if you weren’t of alert disposition.
You were supposed to defrost this freezer box once a week by turning the power off at the mains and letting the melted ice drip into a tray.
But seeing as I’d failed to graduate from the June Cleaver School of Housewifery, I defrosted it every six months using bowls of boiling water and a really big knife – because by that stage the freezer box was so frosted up it was the size of a small igloo.
The trick was to hack off the ice in lumps without piercing the pipes, because the coolant was in the pipes and the coolant contained chlorofluorocarbons and if the chlorofluorocarbons had escaped they would have taken out the entire upper atmosphere, not to mention Nanna.
Reading this you probably think that life was very exciting back in the 70s.
Well, you’re right.
Remind me to tell you one day about ironing your hair.
I hadn’t thought about that yellow fridge in decades but then the other night I made Carrot Risoni and it was the exact same colour.
It also looked suspiciously like that great 70s staple, Rice-a-Riso, the favourite dinner-in-a-box of discerning newlyweds who had $2.70 left in the bank and four days to go until pay day.
It got your Grandpa and me thinking about all sorts of 70s things – things that are probably best consigned to the mists of time but I’m going to tell you anyway.
Things like curried sausages, cassata and Camp Pie.
Polony and Ricecream.
Tab, Kola Beer and Passiona.
Sugar Smacks, Frosties and Monbulk jam in a big tin.
Smoked oysters on top of Arnotts Counter Biscuits.
Ben Ean moselle.Choo Choo Bars.
Luckily, the Carrot Risoni (or orzo as it’s called outside of Australia) doesn’t taste anything like Rice-a-Riso.
It is seriously delicious – very light, very comforting – and my new favourite dish.
Risoni/orzo is rice-shaped pasta and it’s great for someone like me, who’s yet to meet a risotto she actually likes.
This recipe is from Monte Mathews’ food blog, Chewing the Fat, which you’ll find here.

Place carrots in a food processor and pulse until they’re finely chopped.
Melt butter in a heavy medium-sized saucepan over medium heat.
Add risoni and carrots and sauté until risoni is golden, about 5 minutes.
Add the water, stock and garlic and cook, uncovered, over medium heat until all the liquid is absorbed, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes.
Stir in Parmesan cheese, spring onions, and rosemary.
Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve sprinkled with a little extra minced rosemary if you like.
By the way, I secretly love June Cleaver (aka Barbara Billingsley).
God knows why she didn’t achieve icon status like Audrey Hepburn – she was certainly a better actor (OK, Paddington Bear was a better actor than Audrey Hepburn, but you get my drift).
More importantly, June knew the value of a nice shirt-waist dress, a good home-cooked meal and a fridge the size of the Parthenon.
Here are some pictures in her memory.

Dear Amelia,
Sometimes, when you’re bored and reduced to watching repeats of America’s Next Top Model (Cycle 12), things that you normally wouldn’t do seem like a really good idea.
This was one of them.

Pour yourself a glass of wine, put the chicken mince, pancetta and parsley into a mini food processor and whiz until finely chopped.
Put the mixture into a bowl and stir in the ricotta and parmesan cheeses, sea salt to taste and lots of freshly ground black pepper.
Make sure everything is well combined.
Refill your glass, put a teaspoon of mixture in the middle of a wonton wrapper, dip your finger in a small bowl of water and wet around all four edges.
If you’re making ravioli, put another wonton wrapper on top and press all the edges together to make a tight seal, expelling any air as you go.
To make tortelloni, fold the wonton wrapper in half and press the edges together.
Fold the long edge up towards you and bring the two bottom corners together to make a cushiony semi-circle.
Dab one of these corners with water and press to seal. Do this 35 times.

If you decided to go down the tortelloni-making road, you’ll have had 85 glasses of wine by this stage.
Because, basically, the procedure is fucking endless.
You’ll also have a plateful of shapes that look nothing like the headgear worn by the Flying Nun but if you’re a person of a certain age and you’re drunk they will remind you of her anyway.

Seeing as you’re not allowed to lift anything heavy for another four weeks, get the person who is refilling your wine glass to fill a really big pasta pot with water and bring it to the boil on top of the stove.
Chuck in half the tortelloni/ravioli and simmer for about 4 minutes.
Fish them out with a Chinese strainer or slotted spoon.

It occurred to me after my 85th glass of wine that a big one of these would be perfect for catching a flying nun

Put the cooked tortelloni straight into a big shallow pot of barely simmering tomato passata (bought or homemade).
Weep because you decided to make your own passata but didn’t factor in that by this stage YOU WOULD HAVE LOST THE WILL TO LIVE.
Put the remaining uncooked tortelloni into the pan of boiling water and repeat the whole procedure.
Serve with grated parmesan cheese.
Seeing as I was as smashed as a rat and starving to death by the time I finished making these, I didn’t take a picture.
This is probably a good thing because they looked like the heads of flying nuns nestled in a sea of blood.
Extremely tasty though.
And seeing as this was an original recipe thought up by me, your Grandpa actually gave me a round of applause.
But I suspect this had as much to do with the fact that I was still upright as it did with the taste.

Dear Amelia,
Grandpa is eating leftover Yorkshire Lasagne as I write this.
It smells heavenly but I can’t eat any because I’m having a colonoscopy on Wednesday and today I have to eat what’s called a “low-residue diet”.
So far I’ve had five cups of black tea and a jar of Heinz Smooth Summer Fruits Gel, plucked fresh from the baby food aisle at Woolies this morning.
According to the label on the jar it’s suitable for “ALL ages over 6 months”, so this will be good practice for when my teeth fall out.
For dinner tonight, I’ll have strips of skinless chicken breast poached in Campbell’s Chicken Consomme with some pasta thrown in for good measure.
Yum.
(And I mean that sincerely – Campbell’s consommés are tops.)
Tomorrow I’ll move on to the serious bit, referred to around here as Hello Sorbent.
No food to be consumed AT ALL (there are lots of capital letters on the instruction sheet) and from 4pm I’ll drink a glassful of ColonLYTELY™ every 15 minutes until all three litres are consumed or until I fall off the toilet and drown in my own vomit, whichever comes first.
ColonLYTELY™ cleans out your insides and tastes vile – like seawater with half a lemon squeezed in.
The person who invented it wanted to call it ColonFUCKINGAWFUL but wasn’t allowed.
Wednesday at 6.30am I will venture into the non-luxurious surrounds of Albany Regional Hospital and shortly thereafter have the old telescope-up-the-bum procedure.Après colonoscopy (that’s French for “no longer shitting”), I will be given a sandwich by a nurse and it will be one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted in my life.
I know this because I’ve been après colonoscopy twice before.
Moving on: Your Uncle Paul came to stay on the weekend and it was lovely.
Yorkshire Lasagne is his favourite meal, so I cooked it on Saturday night.
I only cook it on special occasions because it takes forever to make, but believe me, it’s worth it.
It’s called Yorkshire Lasagne because I don’t think they cook it like this in Italy.
Whatever. It’s delicious. And rich enough to bring Elvis back from the dead.

For the white sauce60g butter3 tbsp plain flour3 cups low-fat milk (to make up for the rest of it)

To make the bolognese, fry the onion in the olive oil in a big saucepan over low-ish heat until the onion’s soft but not brown.
Increase the heat and chuck in the mince and garlic and cook, stirring with a fork, until the mince is brown and no longer lumpy.
Stir in the tomato paste and white wine.
Pour in enough water to cover (you want a runny sauce) and then stir in the tomatoes and oregano.
Season with salt and lots of pepper and simmer, partly covered with the saucepan lid, over low heat for 1-1½ hours.
Let it cool.
While it’s cooling, make the white sauce by bringing the milk to just below the boil in a small saucepan.
Have a balloon whisk handy and melt the butter over low-ish heat in another saucepan.
Off the heat, stir the flour into the butter with a wooden spoon, then increase the heat slightly and let this mixture (called a roux) cook for a couple of minutes.
Pour in the hot milk all at once and whisk like buggery with the metal whisk.
Doing it this way, you never get lumps in your white sauce.
Bring to the boil and let it simmer until slightly thickened.
Turn off the heat and stir in a handful of the grated cheese.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
To assemble the lasagne, put a ladleful of bolognese sauce and half a ladle of water in the bottom of the lasagne dish and mix them together.
Put a single layer of instant lasagne sheets on top.
Cover the lasagne sheets with some bolognese sauce, top this with a layer of white sauce, then sprinkle grated cheeses over the top.
Continue layering in this way until all the sauce is used up, finishing with a layer of bolognese on top.
Sprinkle cheeses on top of the bolognese and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until tender when pierced in the middle with a knife.
Let the lasagne sit on the bench for five minutes before serving.